Your worst crashes! (That you survived)

[Spacetraindriver]

Title is pretty much that. I find most of my spectacular failures near the launch pad survivable. Most airliner disasters result in 1-3 deaths.

[Jovus]

Back in the bad old days when I was still getting used to FAR, I was bringing a Mk2 spaceplane back from orbit. I pitched up a little too much and the airframe shredded itself completely. All I had left was the cockpit and one attached canard. I managed to put it in a strong enough intentional flat spin that it landed safely on the water.

[-M-TheDoctor]

I had a Kraken attack once on a space station around the Mun. I had 5 Kerbals in that station in three separate pods. The explosion just sent everything flying, making the map view of the Mun look like a mini Saturn (the station was over 100 parts, and only a few were destroyed). So, now I got 5 very frighted Kerbals in a field of debris orbiting the Mun. I quickly modified my Lunar lander with a hitchhiker can, and sent Jeb up all by himself to go and pick these poor saps up. The hardest part was Han Solo-ing it through the debris field to get close enough to each pod to have the Kerbals EVA to the rescue ship. We got them all picked up though, and they headed back home. Upon further inspection, the space station had suffered from an "Apollo 13" style catastrophic failure. The Xenon gas tanks in the service bay shorted out, causing an explosive decompression of the service bay. The force of the explosion caused the command pod with station commander Dunfee to separate from the science lab, where Bill and Segwick were. the service bay was in between the lab and the sleeping quarters, where Herman and Wingrad were sleeping at the time. That station was set to be a staging area for Minimus mining operations, but that cataclysmic event erased any hopes of that plan. (I.E. I erased that save and started a new one with the OPM mod installed )

[Goddess Bhavani]

I posted this yesterday but -

Large helicopter crashes usually look absolutely stunning but the disintegrating blades and parts absorb a lot of the impact and KSP helicopters aren't as top-heavy as real choppers, so everyone usually survives.

[Bev7787]

I was landing a suborbital srb powered ship, however I set the thrust a little "too" high (I was using procedural parts). Speed in upper atmosphere peaked at 2000 m/s, destroying the fins before I came back nearly straight down, without a heat shield. How Jeb survived I will never know

[Mikki]

Back in 0.9, i started this nice little SSTO, steered backwards (from a commandpod inside the fairing...). No Kerbals harmed.

[FlyingPete]

Attempting to glide a TSTO spaceplane back to KSC. Pulled up a bit too sharply and had rapid unplanned disassembly at the cargo bay. I was left with a Mk3 cockpit, small fuel tank (empty) and a pair of canards. Managed to regain control and point the remaining ship 'tail' first for a lithobraking landing. The tank exploded on hitting the ground, and the cockpit bounced a couple of times before coming to a stop on its side. With a little electrical power left, it was rolled upright using the reaction wheels,and all 4 Kerbs survived to fly another day

[FungusForge]

Landed on another planet (Arkas) with a crew of fourteen to kerb a base. They landed on the side of a mountain, a bit away from the base. So after bolting a small barricade to the ground to prevent the pods from rolling down the hill, I switched to a rover to pick them up and ferry them to the base, however when the rover arrived I discovered that the slope prevented the rover from staying still. After some thinking I decided to put the rover uphill of the pods thinking that the barricade I set up previously would be enough to prevent everything from rolling down the mountain. I was wrong. After the explosions stopped I managed to recover three survivors, 2 of which were already EVA'd and could only watch the carnage. The seemingly emotionless core commanding the rover probably enjoyed this.

This was the aftermath.

[viktor19]

Simulating my career Mun lander/hopper since I play with KCT. I land and hop to the next biome. Then I realise I have fuel left, but not enough for anything, so I take off to some 1 km altitude and the point it down, firing the engine for the last time. As luck would have it, at the time of impact my DMagic magnetometer was extended, and lander bounced on it to some 500 m altitude before finally crashing.

Thanks DMagic for some new ideas

[magnemoe]

I once tried to land an 2000 ton Orion powered ship on Mun, this worked well until I switched to chemical engines and started the final decent.

Giant ship turned to slow so I was unable to kill my horizontal speed then rotate back to land upright.

Well parts everywhere, it looked more impressive in map mode, yes part of the ship went ballistic and crashed 30 km away.

The fun part was that the crew quarter broke off and I was able to land it safely. Impact speed was slow it was the 2000 ton tumbling who caused the crash effect.

[Tex_NL]

Only very rarely do I crash my Kerbal craft. Instead the thing that keeps crashing on a regular basis is the game itself.

[Rade Krman]

Yesterday, I successfully docked for the first time in my life. Then I docked another ship, one full of fuel. I wanted to improve the orbit of my station because my Pe was way below 100km. Unfortunately, once I started pushing the station, it started wobbling, spinned around, one part fell off and my orbit was completely ruined, I was bound for a crash. No parachutes, no nothing!

Well, the station split in two while burning in the atmosphere, Draginja Kerman died horribly and the game automatically switched me to Rade Kerman whom I tried to EVA at the moment it crashed. It didn't seem to help, he exploded in a fireball. BUT, when trying to return to the space center, it offered me to "recover vessel". I recovered and it said that Rade is ready for the next mission

It must have been the mythical anti-kraken

[StrandedonEarth]

The start of my Moho Colony

[Van Disaster]

Back when not all my crashes were catastrophic:

I've had spaceplanes break up at 50km & managed to keep the cockpit intact ( water landing ) a few times, I've EVA'd crew at 30km & had them live. I've given up trying to have one survive *all* of reentry

I managed to water land an out-of-fuel returning spaceplane & it promptly sank to the seabed: you can see it below the rescue plane, it's the little arrow shape... those guys lived too.

[Vermil]

It has to be early in my pre-v1.0 game. Stock and Science Sandbox.

In a desperate early attempt to grab some dearly needed science points, I went on one of those straight-up-into-space-and-down-again trips with Bob.

And went EVA in space. Bob immediately proved his stupidity-meter by promptly letting go. The next many long seconds saw me frantically, but very ineptly, trying to use the rocket pack to re-board the pod. I failed and Bob re-entered on his own. I stayed with Bob all the way down and was able to determine that there was no functioning heat model. I used up the remaining rocket-pack fuel in a frantic attempt to brake his falling speed near to ground. To not much avail.

Next, I was astonished to see him hit the ground like a bullet and then bounce up like 100m. And smack back into the ground again. He was lying there, motionless like a ragdoll. I tentatively tapped the <w>-key, and to my jaw-dropped amazement, Bob druggedly got to his feet and offered a dizzy smile. He was alive and well.

This kinda let me believe there was no damage model to the kerbals outside a spacecraft. This notion was quickly dispelled however, when Jebediah soon after accidently fell to his death while testing ladders, from a rather low height. I decided the game had 'fooled' me regarding the rules, and felt justified in 'cheating' by reverting the flight and getting my precious Jebediah back to life.

Edited October 10, 2015 by Vermil

[Clipperride]

Here's all that remained of a solid rocket assisted take off with landing gear slightly out of alignment. Luckily no one was seriously hurt in the resulting explosion....

[oglommi]

Had a spaceplane breaking up during reentry. All kerbonauts survived because they jumped out and I changed focus to a piece of debris instead of the freefalling kerbals hitting the surface.

[moogoob]

Hehe... this one involves a mun rover, too low a TWR and an unreliable Mechjeb suicide burn counter.

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[The Optimist]

Kraken attack on the launchpad while I went to get a cup of coffee

I come back to find the entire ksc gone.

[LordFerret]

I've posted this picture before, quite a while back. This was the end result of a catastrophic failure during launch of a ginormous rocket I built... it tore itself apart after clearing the gantries (TT-18A's). I was able to deploy the chutes, just in time for the capsule to land on the top of a TT-18A. And there it sat. (Good luck getting down guys!)

[-M-TheDoctor]

The start of my Moho Colony

http://i.imgur.com/CgMTPi8.png

Strong start!

[Hotaru]

Already posted a few weeks ago, my first attempt at landing on the Mun in 64K:

[davidpsummers]

I had a ship blow up on the launch pad and the escape system fail. But the crew capsule ended up lying on the ground safe and sound though pure luck.

[Madrias]

Was just a probe, but Artificial Intelligences count, right?

Either way, enjoy a landing in 0.90 of a plane that failed flying through the R&D tunnel.

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Was quick-thinking enough to start grabbing pictures between mashing keys. Yeah, that was a keyboard landing.

[sebbemann]

Don't have a picture of it, but landed a class C astroid at KSC with a manned vessel attached with a claw. By mistake i had put the parachutes on the same stage as the last rocket stage, so they opened far up in space. I didn't notice it until I reentered the atmosphere, where the parachutes burned up. With nothing other than air resistance slowing it down, it crash landed near KSC at several hundred m/s. Every module intact, except two solar panels. Which is a bummer since they were expensive.